The present disclosure relates to automated and semi-automated troubleshooting for a wide variety of systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to leveraging decision trees to reduce costs incurred by companies for customer support.
Due to the fast evolution of technology, even technologically savvy individuals are often faced with problems when installing or using consumer electronic devices. Regardless of the users technical abilities, when such problems arise it can be a large frustration and time commitment to have resolved. This frustration is one leading causes of lost customers. As such, most consumer hardware and software companies, or companies who provide services that rely upon hardware or software, expend significant resources upon technical help lines. These help lines are traditionally large phone centers that have representatives with some degree of technical expertise. A customer who is experiencing a problem will call the technical help line, and be coached through diagnostic and service protocols until the problem is resolved. If resolution isn't possible over the phone, often the customer will have the option of returning the device, or an in person repair service. More recently, chat systems and remote access have enabled technical help representatives to trouble shoot user's systems more efficiently.
While such methods for troubleshooting and resolving user technical problems work generally well, there are a few acute areas for improvement. From the user's perspective, the time required to get a representative's assistance is typically onerous. Users are often put on hold for minutes, if not tens of minutes prior to being connected with a representative. Further, once in contact with the representative, often service is slow because these representatives are often juggling multiple tech service calls simultaneously to maximize efficiency on their end. All this wasted time for the user can become severely wearing. Further, there is no guarantee that the individual the user is speaking with knows the user's language, or is easy to understand. This becomes particularly important as more and more call centers are offshored, and the representatives have strong accents and reduced phone sound quality.
From the company's perspective, maintaining large call centers which are reachable at odd hours and capable of dealing with spikes in customer calls is a very expensive endeavor. In order to mitigate these costs, companies often rely upon outsourcing, and workforce reduction. However, as previously noted, the outsourcing to other countries may result in language hurdles, and the reduction in staff invariably results in longer waits or reduced service.
Traditionally, automation would be relied upon to overcome these sorts of hurdles; but for troubleshooting of technical issues this has been elusive due to the large number of variables associated with diagnosing the problem. Current belief is that a person is required to solve these sorts of technical issues.
Sometimes, however, the problems being reported into the company belong to a set of common issues. These commonalities may be due to the design features of the systems, or due to known compatibility issues with infrastructure of other devices/software. In fact, much of the time the problems being called into a tech help line are routine issues that are readily resolved. This is particularly true when the user base is less technologically proficient, such as when the product or service is consumed by the general population.
One clear example of this is with high speed internet connectivity. Companies provide broadband internet service where the user is mailed hardware for self-installation. While most of these installations are completed without any issue, there is some percentage where it is unsuccessful. By following some basic protocols the vast majority of these problems may be addressed, but still many of these disgruntled users call into customer service helplines to get the issue resolved.
Traditionally, companies have attempted to reduce the frequency of these calls by including troubleshooting guides or a recorded message with tips while the user is on wait for a representative. However, none of these systems do much to actually resolve the customers problem, and further no data is generated to help streamline the troubleshooting process.
As such an urgent need exists for systems and methods for automating the troubleshooting process. Such systems and methods will reduce companies costs associated with technical service, and provide faster and more accurate troubleshooting solutions for users.